


(can't) sit still and breathe

by kingsoftheimpossible



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Non-Famous, Coming Untouched, Crack, Dubious Consent, Embarrassment, Hypnotism, Las Vegas, M/M, Suffering
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-27
Updated: 2015-10-27
Packaged: 2018-04-28 09:05:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5085982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kingsoftheimpossible/pseuds/kingsoftheimpossible
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis gets dumped a week before his wedding and spends his woulda-been Vegas stag party Suffering and heckling a somewhat well-meaning hypnotist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	(can't) sit still and breathe

**Author's Note:**

> ...be in love with you, you in love with meeeeeee. title (sort of) from "the woods" by sea of bees.
> 
> sorry abt this.

“Can’t believe you’re making us go to a bloody magic show when we could be getting hammered,” Louis says, not quite under his breath. Liam doesn’t even humor him with a disappointed look, probably because Louis’ been saying the same thing since they got to Vegas last night when Liam gave him the itinerary.

“Hypnotism’s not technically magic,” Zayn says absently around his cigarette, and Louis scowls at him because whose fucking side is he on anyway.

“Liam, this line’s about a billion fucking miles long,” Louis snaps, waving a hand at the, probably, metric trillion fuckton of people in front of them. “There probably won’t even be any fucking seats left by the time we get to the door.”

“We’ve already got tickets,” Liam says evenly, like that should be obvious.

Which, Liam planned everything, so, yeah, okay. Whatever.

Louis snatches the cigarette out of Zayn’s mouth and takes a drag, grumbling, “Still fucking stupid,” just in case anyone’s forgotten.

Zayn rolls his eyes and shakes another cigarette out of his pocket. “Stop being a brat, Louis.”

“Stop riding my fucking nads, Zayn, how about that?” he shoots back, more acid in it than is strictly necessary.

Liam makes a soft, unhappy noise in the back of his throat, and then he’s got his arms around Louis’ shoulders, hugging him from behind and swaying him back and forth like he’s an idiot baby.

So they’re technically here on what was meant to be the stag weekend before Louis’ wedding. So that got called off. So he’s being a miserable fucking bastard. So what.

“Liam, I swear to god-”

“Just this one show,” Liam coaxes, squeezing Louis’ shoulders tighter. “And then we can drink Vegas dry.”

The tension drains out of Louis’ muscles and he lets Liam rock him a bit, glaring at the pavement. “Whatever,” he says.

Zayn runs a gentle hand down his arm, accepting the apology Louis would literally rather die than give him.

The line starts moving, carrying them closer to the entrance of the stupid fucking magic show, and Liam keeps his arms around Louis’ shoulders, both of them nearly tripping and meeting their deaths on the dirty Vegas pavement, and Louis’ almost laughing by the time they get inside, Liam apologizing to everyone they stumble into and Zayn tongue-to-teeth grinning beside them.

* * *

It all sort of sinks back in once they get inside and take their seats- not right in front of the stage, but not far off either. In the dim pre-show light, Louis has a little too much time to think about how they’re only sitting here because he was supposed to be married next week, and how Liam was supposed to be his best man, and how there’s still a tan line where his engagement ring used to sit on his finger.

So he’s in a good and proper _mood_ by the time the crowd lights drop to nothing and a single spotlight illuminates the stage.

Liam’s on one side of him, excitedly leaning towards the stage, and Zayn’s on the other, not-so-subtly texting. Louis slides down in the theater seat until his chin’s propped against his chest and he can glare at the stage without putting too much effort into it.

“Liam, can you at least get me a fucking beer if I have to sit through this?” Louis stage-whispers, and he hears a few people behind him mumble unenthusiastic agreement. Surprise of all fucking surprises, the hypnotism show isn't the top place people visiting Vegas would choose to spend their nights. Fucking weird. Someone would have to loudly and repeatedly point this empirical evidence out to Liam James Fucking Payne.

“I don’t want to miss anything,” Liam says apologetically, and Zayn’s already shaking his head on the negative when Louis turns to beg and prod in his direction.

His whole goddamn future’s fallen apart and no one will even get him a fucking beer. Typical. He kicks out at the seat in front of him and lets himself wallow for a moment in the knowledge that this stroppy bullshit attitude probably has more than a little to do with how still-unmarried he’s going to be in a week.

A blond steps out from behind the deep blue curtain, strolling casually into the spotlight.

“Welcome to the Hypnotic Doctor Styles,” he says, bit of Irish lilting his voice. “I'm the Doctor's assistant, Niall. The Doctor asks that you turn off your phones- hey-” He snaps his fingers loudly, and Louis realizes he’s looking at Zayn. “Yeah, you- fucking Topman model over there, turn your fucking phone off, how about?”

Zayn’s eyebrows climb high on his forehead, but the cheery, oddly-threatening demeanor of this Niall person seems to work, because Zayn grudgingly powers his phone down.

“There’s a good lad. Now, tonight’s entertainment is only suited for those eighteen and up-”

Louis’ brows scrunch together, and he glances at Liam who looks similarly confused.

“I thought it was a hypnotist, not a titty show,” Louis hisses, and Liam frowns at him, shrugging.

“Maybe the hypnotist is topless?” he suggests uncertainly.

“Hypnotits,” Louis mumbles, and Zayn snorts.

“Ahem,” the stage blond says loudly, looking at the three of them with some amusement. Liam looks repentant and Zayn looks unimpressed and Louis just scowls at him. “Hypnotism requires intense focus, so we ask that you remain quiet during the important bits. There’ll be plenty of times for oohs and ahhs when the show’s over. Now, I’d like to welcome-” he grins, stepping aside with a complicated flourish, “Doctor Styles.”

Louis was sort of expecting a puff of smoke or some sort of dramatic entrance, but the guy just steps through the curtain, gangly and a bit awkward as he offers the curious crowd a dimpled grin and a little wave. He’s wearing a disaster of a pink silk shirt, barely buttoned, and there’s some sort of sparkling jangly scarf wound through his curly hair. His pants are so tight that Louis’ pretty sure he can spot dick even from his seat fifty feet out, or maybe it’s a weirdly placed mic pack. Either way, what the fuck.

“Hello, everyone,” Doctor Styles says, deep voice smooth and amplified through his collar mic.

“That was a bit anticlimactic,” Louis whispers to Zayn, who grunts in agreement.

Unfortunately, they seem to be situated uniquely well for their voices to carry to the stage, because Doctor Styles frowns, squinting past the stage lights and picking them out of the audience.

“I haven’t even done anything yet,” he says morosely, like he’d be whining if his voice wasn’t a monotonous sort of drone.

“Yeah, fucking noticed, believe it or not,” Louis calls back, and there are scattered chuckles in the crowd.

“Hypnotism takes time,” Doctor Styles explains matter-of-factly. “I can’t hypnotize everyone the second I walk on stage.” He’s scratching absently at his belly button, which is distractingly, confusingly visible through his open shirt. Louis vaguely remembers his own voice saying _hypnotits_ not twenty minutes ago.

“Okay, fair,” Louis agrees. “But you also can’t hypnotize anyone at all because it’s fucking bullshit.”

Liam’s hand slaps over his mouth, and he apologizes loudly over Louis’ continued attempts at heckling. “Please go on, sorry, he’s just tired. We’re very excited for your show!”

Doctor Styles is still frowning a little, lips pouted out in a way that looks ridiculous on an adult who’s flashing that much titty during a scam of a Vegas show. “Alright....um....anyway, I’m Doctor Styles, a certified hypnotist-” Louis snorts, making him stumble over his next sentence, “a-and I need, um, a volunteer from the audience. Niall, if you could-?”

The blond steps to the front of the stage and makes a show of scanning the crowd for volunteers. Louis wonders if it’s disheartening for the quack hypnotist to see barely a dozen hands raised.

“You, sweetheart, you look great, come on up!” Niall hops off the stage and escorts a pretty woman in a princess crown up the steps. “What’s your name, darlin’?”

She tells them her name is Jenny and it’s her 18th birthday, and she’d heard so much about Doctor Styles from her friend who came to Vegas last year and blah blah blah ppphthhthththhtt, Louis rolls his eyes, sticking his tongue out and loudly gagging on nothing.

Doctor Styles introduces himself to her- “You can call me Harry, is that alright?” and it looks like she just about melts into a puddle on the floor when he presses his big hand to her waist to lead her into the spotlight.

“Are you nervous, Jenny?” he asks, and god, Louis is going to kill himself if his voice stays this fucking slow the entire show. They’ll be here all goddamn night.

“A little,” Jenny admits, laughing, and Doctor Harry Whatever Styles smiles reassuringly at her.

“No need to be nervous! Here, why don’t you have a seat?”

Niall pulls a chair out of seemingly literally nowhere, and Louis elbows Zayn, whispers, “Why isn’t he the fucking main act?”

Once Jenny’s seated, Harry squats in front of her, hands splayed on her bare knees.

“Is it eighteen and up because he’s just going to letch on eighteen year old girls for two hours?” Louis demands, and Liam chokes, elbowing Louis hard in the side.

Doctor Styles clears his throat loudly, but Louis can see a blush creeping up the back of his neck where it’s barely hidden under his shaggy curls. “Jenny,” he says, voice tight like he's getting irritated, “are you embarrassed easily?”

“Uh-” Jenny says, frowning now and looking slightly less taken with Doctor Styles. Louis reckons he could start his own Vegas act as a mind reader because her brain is practically screaming _what the fuck_? “I don’t know?”

“That’s alright! We’re not going to do anything too weird to start out. Just a little strange. Do you trust me?” he asks, smiling up at her gently, fingers drumming soft on her kneecaps.

“I- yes,” she answers after a moment. “Yes, I do.”

“There’s your first mistake,” Louis says flatly, and he hears Doctor Styles give a long-suffering sigh.

“Jenny, I want you to close your eyes, alright?” She does, and the Doctor gets to his feet, taking a step back. “I’m going to count down from thirty, and you’re going to count with me, okay? And every time I get to a multiple of five, you’re going to let out a long, deep breath. Does that sound okay?”

“Yes,” she says again, eyes closed.

Louis’ skin crawls a bit, imagining being in her place, blind on a stage in front of a couple hundred people. The hypnotist part doesn’t worry him, because that’s clearly bullshit, but the rest of it-

Doctor Styles starts the countdown, slow, monotone voice leading Jenny in the world’s most boring breathing exercise. When they reach zero, Doctor Styles hums softly.

“I bet you feel very relaxed, Jenny. Very warm and relaxed.”

“Yes,” she agrees, voice softer than it’d been before, sleepy.

“That’s very good, Jenny. I think you’d feel better, though, if you neighed like a horse, don’t you?”

Her eyebrows draw together, clearly saying _Um, no, what the fuck_ , and Louis smirks.

“I- I don’t-”

“Let’s just breathe, okay? In.....out.......in.....and it feels like something’s rising in your throat, doesn’t it? Out......in...It’d feel so much better if you just-”

There’s a strange sound, a soft, uncertain whinnying from Jenny’s parted lips.

Doctor Styles beams. “That’s good, that’s very good, now just louder- in.....out......in.....”

And again, but louder.

“This is fucking stupid,” Louis snaps, stamping his feet on the floor because sitting still is hard enough all the time, and sitting still for this horseshit is impossible.

Doctor Styles glances over his shoulder, eyes locking immediately with Louis’ in spite of the stage lighting. “Jenny,” he says, “let’s wake up, okay? Let’s count to ten, and on ten, we’ll wake up. One....”

On ten, he snaps, and Jenny’s eyes flutter open.

The audience claps politely as she looks embarrassed and astounded by Niall telling her she’s made horse noises onstage in front of a full crowd, but Doctor Styles never takes his eyes off Louis.

When Jenny is safely back in her seat, Doctor Styles makes his way to the very edge of the stage and shields his eyes from the bright stage lights, squinting at Louis across the rows of people.

“And what was wrong with that, please?” he asks politely, a little grit underneath the monotone.

Louis scoffs, ignoring Liam’s mumbled _don’t_ from beside him. “She just made a fucking horse noise. Who cares? You don’t need to hypnotize someone for them to make a fucking horse noise- look-” he screws up his face and does his best approximation of what he imagines a horse might sound like, and the audience laughs, surprised- “See? She probably just didn’t want to embarrass you because she’s nice, but that was fucking weak, honestly.”

Doctor Styles purses his lips, but he doesn’t really look upset, just sort of speculative. “So you don’t think she was hypnotized?”

“If I’m being honest, I don’t think anyone’s been hypnotized ever, in the history of the fucking world, so no, I don’t.”

“Why don’t you come up, then?” Doctor Styles asks nicely, sweeping a broad hand out towards the stairs leading up onto the stage. “If it’s not real, then it doesn’t matter what I tell you to do, right? Because it won’t work.”

Something squirms uncomfortably in Louis’ stomach at the idea of being up on the stage, eyes closed, watched. “Right,” he agrees anyway, “because it’s bullshit.”

“So come up,” Styles prompts again, a slow smile spreading over his face, like he knows something Louis doesn’t.

Louis scowls, throwing himself to his feet and again ignoring Liam’s _oh jesus_ behind him. He waves off Niall’s attempt to help him onto the stage, taking the stairs two at a time until he’s standing in the spotlight, facing Doctor Harry Styles.

He’s really something up close- no less ridiculous, but kind of, like. Okay-looking. Or something. If a person were into idiot weirdo brainfreaks, or whatever. Which Louis isn’t, or whatever.

“What’s your name, please?” the Doctor asks, looking down at Louis from his inch or two of extra height, the bastard.

“Louis Tomlinson,” Louis answers, crossing his arms over his chest and rocking onto his tiptoes in what he tells himself is a subtle manner.

“Hello, Louis. You can call me Harry, if you like.”

“Good,” Louis tells him, “because I sure as fuck wasn’t about to call you Doctor.”

If that stings or irritates in any way, Harry does a pretty good job not showing it. “Why don’t you take a seat?” he suggests, waving to the chair Jenny’d sat in earlier.

Louis rolls his eyes, turning to the audience. “Just to be clear,” he shouts, because Harry might be mic’d but he’s not, “I’m sitting in this chair of my own volition and not because I’m being brainfucked or anything.”

The crowd laughs, delighted, more alive than they’ve been since the show started. Even Harry bites back a grin, dimple popping on one cheek anyway. Louis sits, flopping down on the chair so hard that it slides back a few inches across the sleek-waxed stage floor.

“Do your worst,” he says, smirking up at Harry, who mostly looks a bit confused by him.

“So, to be clear, you don’t think this will work,” Harry says slowly, looking from Louis out to the audience, like he’s inviting them to share the setup of a grand joke.

“Right.”

“So I could say I’m going to hypnotize you and ask you to do _anything_ , and you won’t care, right?”

Louis rolls his eyes, slumping back in the chair and making a big show of being bored, though the heat of the stage light is starting to make him sweat, and he doesn’t particularly like how the crowd can see him but all he can see past Harry is a blinding wall of white.

“Yes, god, I already said-”

“So,” Harry cuts him off, and there’s something determined and steely in his face, though he still somehow looks pleasantly dull, “if I were to say I’m going to make you come in your pants in front of all these people, you’d say...?”

Louis’ stomach drops, stone-heavy, but he pastes on a cocky, dismissive grin. “I’d say you’re not really my type, but I’m flattered.”

More laughs from the invisible crowd. Weirdly unsettling now that Harry’s thrown him off-balance. He feels a bit clammy, honestly.

Harry huffs a laugh, eyes dropping as he ducks his head almost shyly, glancing back up at Louis from beneath his lashes and the stray curls tumbling over his stupid scarf. “But, for legal purposes, you don’t have any objections?”

Louis shrugs half-heartedly, blinking a few times to shake off the dazzling impact of Harry’s suddenly very-green eyes. Weird trick of the light, probably. “Guess not.”

“Good,” Harry says, smiling broadly, and he turns so he’s facing the crowd and Louis in equal measure, so he can speak to everyone. “Now, I get the feeling you’re a bit stubborn-” A round of giggles, and Louis isn’t sure if he just imagines Liam’s voice- _You have no idea_ \- “- so I’ll have to pull out all my best tricks, and you’ll all have to be patient with me, alright?” He tosses the crowd a winning smile, then turns it on Louis, who wasn’t really ready for it. He feels himself blinking stupidly again, mouth dropping open slightly.

“Let’s start with some breathing, okay? Just breathe as I tell you, in.......out.......”

Louis scrunches his nose and takes great, exaggerated breaths, slightly off-beat, that make Harry’s face pinch with disapproval.

“Good,” Harry says, a bit flatly. “In.....So tell me, why are you in Vegas? Assuming it’s not your eighteenth birthday? Out....”

Louis can practically feel Liam’s worried mom vibes telegraphing him from the audience, but he just curls his lip as he breathes and tells Harry the truth. “It was supposed to be my bachelor party, but my fiancee broke off the wedding last week.” He says it with enough derision and venom that he’s pretty sure it hurts everyone else in the room more than it hurts him, so that’s alright.

Harry looks startled, taking an involuntary step back like Louis’ just slapped him in the face. “Oh,” he says, and Louis braces himself for the stupid fucking apology he’s heard about a billion iterations of in the last week, but it doesn’t come. “That must be very hard for you,” Harry says instead, frowning, looking genuinely upset. “Let’s see if we can’t help you relax a bit, alright? In........out.......”

And the breathing thing is so stupid, and Louis wants to be mad that Harry’s continuing this idiot pseudoscience bullshit parade when he knows that Louis is- that his life’s- that everything- but he keeps breathing, less sarcastically now. There’s just something about Harry’s voice, the monotone nothing of it, the soft easy flow, that makes it easier to breathe with him than to try breathing in the empty space around his words.

“I’m going to count down from one hundred, alright? On every even number, I want you to open your eyes, and then close them on the odds. Easy, right?”

“Sounds like a lot of fucking work,” Louis grumbles, and the theater beyond the lights hisses with muffled laughs.

“I think you’re perfectly capable,” Harry tells him softly, and Louis wonders hazily if the mic even picks it up. “Now....one hundred....ninety-nine.....ninety-eight....”

Louis’ not even really listening to the numbers, paying more attention to the rhythm of Harry’s counting, blinking in time with the rise and fall of Harry’s voice. He’s not sure what number they’re on when Harry stops counting, but it must be an odd one because Louis’ eyes stay closed.

“Your arms feel heavy, don’t they?” Harry asks, no more inflection to it than he’d had while counting. “Couldn’t move them if you wanted to.”

And- oh, well- maybe. Maybe Louis’ arms do feel a bit heavy. But anyone’s arms would be heavy if they’d stayed still this long, he reasons. “Could,” he mumbles anyway, frowning. It takes a ridiculous amount of effort to peel his eyelids open and glare at Harry, and all he gets in return is an indulgent little smile. “Jus’ don’t wanna,” Louis says, letting his eyes close again because it just seems easier, and he's already proven his point.

“That’s alright,” says Harry. “That’s really good. I think you can relax a bit more- it’ll feel really good to relax, won’t it?”

Louis hums noncommittally.

Harry starts counting again, somewhere in the fifties somehow, like Louis’ lost all sorts of time. Blinking has gotten harder, because it’d be so much easier to just leave his eyes closed, and he’s going to say that, but Harry beats him to it.

“Why don’t you let your eyes rest for now? Just focus on breathing evenly while I count down...and every time you breathe out, you’ll be a little more relaxed, feel a little better.”

Sure, Louis thinks, whatever.

They must reach zero at some point, because Harry’s monotone counting voice morphs smoothly into something more intense. Louis keeps losing time. It’s so strange.

“I’m going to _snap_ -” Harry snaps his fingers, _loud_ , when he says it, and Louis feels like he wants to flinch away from the noise, but his body’s just so fucking heavy-”and every time I _snap_ -” again, that desire to jump, but that feeling of being weighed down by his own body, how strange- “you’re going to feel ten times more relaxed, ten times better than you did before.”

Louis’ brain lurches uncomfortably, wondering how to quantify feeling ten times more of anything, but then Harry _snaps_ , and tells him, “You feel ten times more relaxed,” and he finds, weirdly, that he does, if relaxed means feeling heavier.

He hopes Harry doesn’t ask him about moving his arms again, because he’s not sure he could answer, much less be a smartass about it.

“Now, every time I snap, you’re going to let out a deep, deep breath, and you’re going to feel ten times better. Doesn’t that sound really good? So you’re going to let out a deep breath and-” _snap_ “-feel ten times better-”

It’s like the breath gets ripped out of Louis’ lungs, belly clenching hard to force all the air out of his body. He’s barely gasped in another mouthful of air before the snap sounds again, and he exhales heavily, squirming with the force of the breath leaving him. He feels a bit light-headed, like he’s not getting in enough air for what he’s letting out every time Harry snaps-

“I bet you feel really wonderful, don’t you? Relaxed, and warm, and everything so soft-”

When Harry snaps again, Louis’ vaguely aware that the breath he lets out is strangely shuddery, the air he gasps in shaking into his mouth like his lips are quivering.

“You’re alright,” Harry tells him, a soft monotony beneath the unpredictable snapping, too distant to focus on, but anchoring, somehow. “You’re alright, and you’re so relaxed and warm, and the next time I snap, you’re going to feel better than you’ve ever felt. You’re going to feel so good it makes your toes curl and your head spin, alright? Just relax-”

The snap sounds out like a gunshot in the silent theater, and Louis breathes out so harshly his hips rock up off the chair, gut clenching, lower down the soft sac of his balls quivering, tensing as his hips rock through another snap, another shaky breath while his dick flexes in his jeans, and he can barely hear the soft noises shocked out of his own throat past the blood rushing in his ears.

It’s quiet for a long moment, just breathing, floating in the unbelievable softwarmnothing.

Then a voice, pleased and softwarm itself, inviting him back. Offering him a rope, a way to, “wake up, alright, when I count to ten? Let’s wake up. One....two.....”

It happens easily. Louis breathes out a small sigh, eyes sliding open and then snapping shut at the violent brightness of the stage lights. He’d forgotten the stage lights.

He’s forgotten a lot, actually, like why Harry’s looking at him smug and quietly pleased, and why the front of his jeans is disgustingly,uncomfortably wet, and why his breathing is uneven and his face is hot and-

“No fucking way.” Louis means to yell it, but his voice is painfully hoarse, like he’s probably been making some sort of embarrassing noises in that giant blank gap of time he can’t quite grasp. He stands shakily, still knock-kneed from the force of an orgasm he can’t remember, and for a moment he hopes maybe someone just poured a water bottle on his lap while he was- asleep, or whatever.

But he knows, from the way his dick is still half-hard against the soaked seam of his zipper, and the way every bit of his skin is on fire with an embarrassment closer to shame, that he actually- that Harry actually-

“What the _fuck_ ,” he snaps, because if he can’t be disbelieving he can sure as fuck be outraged. "What the fuck," he repeats, taking a shaky step towards Harry, wobbling a little.

Harry holds his hand up, placating, and the lights glint off the silver rings on his fingers. "I didn't do anything you didn't agree to," he reasons, face unreadable but eyes glinting, and Louis realizes for the first time that he's severely underestimated this gaudy fucking bastard. He'd known all along exactly what he was doing. 

"You- no, okay, because-" Louis' brain is still sluggish and he can't seem to get his words in order, can't get the ideas out of his head and onto his tongue- how hypnotism had been sold to him as magic, but it wasn't like that at all, it was like....just...something. Not what he thought. His face is so hot, and the crowd is so quiet. 

The crowd. Christ. His whole body flashes hot, then cold, and he thinks, for a heartstopping, awful moment, that he might pass out. 

Harry's looking at him a little differently now, crease between his brows. "I'm sorry if I've upset you," he mumbles, mouth turning down. "It was- usually people like it."

And Louis isn't sure what to do with that, because technically, he thinks, he did like it. Or- he doesn't remember it, really, but the feeling around it, the soft, easy nothing-

Louis pulls himself together, dragging a shaky smirk across his mouth. "I've had better," he says flippantly, batting his eyelashes and turning to flounce off the stage, stepping into the dark of the audience and the blanket of their murmuring and amusement. He finds Liam and Zayn in the dimness, and they're waiting for him with wide eyes, half-out of their seats already.

"Can we go?" Louis asks, tired now that the crowd's attention is elsewhere, back up on stage where Harry's called someone else up. Everyone's invested now that they've seen whatever they saw with Louis. Figures.

"Yeah," Liam says, jumping into action, stumbling to his feet. "Yeah, no, of course, let's get back to the hotel, alright? You can- you can change, and-" He breaks off, looking a little lost, and Zayn saves him by getting to his feet and wrapping an arm around Louis' shoulders. 

"On the bright side," Zayn says evenly, flipping off the man shushing them a row back, "that was kind of hot." Louis squawks, trying to wrestle out of Zayn's hold, but not trying too hard. The embarrassed burn feels easier to deal with now that Zayn's holding him together and Liam's leading them out into the fresh air, better again when Liam lights a cigarette and passes it over, rubbing at Louis' back as they walk. 

"I didn't know that would-" Liam starts, but Louis just shakes his head.

"We're never talking about it again, Liam," he says very seriously, grabbing Liam's face and making him look directly into Louis' eyes. "We're never thinking about it or mentioning it or alluding to it again. It never happened. Understand?" 

Liam nods, eyes soft and squinted, sweet in the strip lights. "Got it."

"Alright," Zayn says, clapping both of them on the back. "Let's go back to the hotel and then drink until none of us can mention or allude to anything ever again, how's that?"

"Fucking perfect," Louis groans, ignoring the rocky hoarseness of his own voice. 

* * *

 

They drink forfuckingever, and when they stumble back to the hotel room at dawn Louis expects to be asleep before his head hits the pillow.   
  
But he's got about a million things not to think about, so of course he lies awake, drunkdumb brain circling lazily around every terrible thing while the sun rises and Zayn and Liam snore in the adjacent rooms. He wishes, stupidly, for that softwarmnothing to come back, wishes he could reach it now when he needs it, with no one watching. Even the embarrassment after, the hot bodyshame- there'd been something to that, too, maybe, he thinks, and if his dick weren't twice as drunk as the rest of him it probably would've twitched with interest. 

Louis scrubs his hands over his face, turning into the pillow and trying to smother himself before he can sober up enough to think about what's happened to his fucking life.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> i have a Vague part 2 in my head but this is All for now. 
> 
> tippingvelvets on tumblr.


End file.
